


Wish Upon a Blinking Light

by flickerwing



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Crying Lance (Voltron), Family Fluff, Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Friendship, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Male-Female Friendship, My First AO3 Post, My First Work in This Fandom, One Shot, POV Pidge (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, honestly this just made me really sad, let my babes go home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 14:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10466817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerwing/pseuds/flickerwing
Summary: “I just like to look, sometimes. Imagine that they’re all waiting for me there. That we’ll make it back.”It's hard to focus on winning a war when your family is galaxies away. It's hard to remember Earth when you're floating through space in a giant castle ship. It's not hard to come clean when you know they'll listen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I might make this into a short series wherein the Paladins try to contact home, but for now, this is it! Enjoy.

Most days went by without Pidge thinking of Matt or her father more than a couple of times. She was mostly preoccupied with the strict training regimen Shiro and Allura had assigned her and the other paladins. When one of them confronted her alone, Pidge could usually make some sort of witty remark or convince them that she was unbelievably close to finishing a project that she just couldn’t abandon. When they combined forces, however, Pidge could barely say no if they asked her to spend a week in the freezing cold vacuum of space with nothing more than the clothes on her back. Luckily though, they never asked this of her. She was only subjected to team mental and physical torture every day.

Today was a particularly difficult day, though. She’d been keeping track of Earth days and time as much as she could, and from what she could tell, today was somewhere near Matt’s birthday.

Her heart ached for him and her father more than usual tonight. She wondered what damp cell they were locked in – if they even knew what day it was. She barely did. Were they even still in Galra captivity or had they managed to escape like Shiro? Had they been rescued? And if they had, how would she ever find them? The galaxy was so much bigger than she had ever imagined. Infinitely big – it would be impossible for her to track them down. Even now, they were lightyears away from Earth, with hundreds of thousands of inhabited planets within that stretch. Selfishly, she hoped they were still with the Galra. At least then she would have some chance of finding them…

No wonder she couldn’t sleep.

She wandered out into the hallways of the castle, resolving to go to the common area and grab the old junk transmitter that she had left there earlier. The hallways were quiet at this time of night, she knew she wouldn't run into anyone on the way. The other Paladins were all asleep by now. There was Coran and Allura, though. Did Alteans even sleep?

She stopped in her tracks when she saw a huddled shape by the motherboard of the ship. The silhouette was small and hunched over as if it had been standing in the same position for hours. It was definitely too tall to be Keith. Too thin to be Hunk, no offense to him. Maybe Shiro? He always was the first one up in the morning. But whoever it was looked vulnerable and tired… Pidge had never seen Shiro like that…

“Lance?” She called.

He jumped at the sound of her voice and let out a small yelp. He looked up, startled, but his face softened when he saw Pidge.

“Oh, hey, Pidge!” He smiled.

“What’re you doing?” She asked, making her way over to the motherboard. She peered around his shoulders at the screen. A small blinking blue light caught her attention, and she reached past him to select it.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Lance objected, stepping between her and the board, “I could ask you the same question!”

Pidge scrunched her nose in confusion.

“What’re you doing up so late?” He said, pointing a finger at her, “You’re the youngest one here, it’s probably _way_ past your bedtime-”

She shoved him, “You’re _such_ a twat!”

Lance feigned being offended, and the room went silent. Pidge shuffled her feet awkwardly.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Pidge sighed, “because I can’t stop thinking about Matt and my dad.”

Lance’s face fell a little.

“Oh?”

Something opened up inside her at his immediately warm, accepting tone. As if somehow his complete willingness to listen opened up a dam inside her, poured forth all the things she wanted to say. How much she missed them, how unfair it all was, how they were fighting this relentless fight against the Galra Empire but she still couldn't protect what really mattered to her.

“I know forming Voltron and beating the bad guys is our main focus right now… But it just… sucks. After all that’s happened I still don’t know where they are.” She looked up nervously, expecting an expression of comfort and support on Lance’s face – but instead found one of pure understanding.

“I miss my mom,” he whispered, staring at the motherboard, “and, it sounds weird, but I know she’s missing me, too.”

Pidge placed a hand on his forearm.

“Yeah.”

“I- I want to go back to Earth, Pidge. I miss it so much.”

She felt the same and knew Hunk did, too. What did their families think happened to them? Did the teachers at the Garrison even realise they were missing? Were their friends fighting to find answers?

She took a deep breath.

“You know we can’t, Lance.” The words rolled off her tongue sweetly, but they left a bitter taste in her mouth. What a horrible thing it was to break someone’s heart.

“I know,” he replied, his voice thick with tears. He walked back to the screen and tapped the flashing blue dot. A small information tag popped up, and a very familiar image came into focus. Earth, in a condensed, pixelated format that no way captured its true beauty. Graphs and maps covered its blue frame, and some words of Altean flashed on the screen.

“I just like to look, sometimes. Imagine that they’re all waiting for me there. That we’ll make it back.”

“I know, Lance. I know,” Pidge cooed as Lance’s eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry –” His voice hitched as a small sob escaped his lips.

Pidge wrapped her arms around him and hugged him as tight as she could. She was starting to cry too. It all really was so unfair. They were just teenagers. They were just at school one day, a school they all worked really hard to get into, mind you, and they got caught up in a crazy mess of an intergalactic war that had nothing to do with them. An intergalactic war that surely wouldn’t impact them in their lifetimes. A _war_. Just as brutal, messy and sad as any other they had heard about on the news back in their lounge rooms, safe, with their families. Families they couldn’t go back to now, because that meant risking the lives of everyone they had ever known on Earth – who hadn’t already been taken.

“How long have we been gone?” Lance whimpered in her arms. 

Pidge just shook her head.

They were fighters now. But fighters cried sometimes too, she guessed. They had been close to death, injured so badly, and they had seen and fought and protected aliens and it was all so bizarre. It wasn’t fair. Now they were up in the middle of space. Just seven of them. Seven got quite lonely after a while.

“If we had just been caught by the officers that night…” Pidge choked between tears.

This time, Lance pulled away, shaking his head in disagreement. 

“No… Who would’ve found Allura and Coran? And who would have saved the Balmera?” He let out a small laugh, “Who else would be able to find Matt and your dad?”

She wiped her tears away and smiled back, “We’ll find a way to get back to them, Lance.”

He let go of her shoulders and looked longingly at the glowing geometric sphere that was supposedly Earth.

“I hope so.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first fic/one-shot, so I'm primed and ready for feedback! Let me know if I've made errors, what you liked about this, and what you didn't. Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Edit: I reread this and fixed some pretty embarrassing typos....thanks Grammarly for that TOP NOTCH service.....kms honestly...)


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